Thoughts on Ambition

Pablo Picasso, Guernica (detail), 1937 / My old dog Cooper

i'm in my childhood bed and my feet are cold

there's a watercolor on my desk but it has too much color on the edges, it looks like it's coming apart, the yellow on the bottom falling off the edge in a flat sheet the color of dog piss

soup in a bowl on the floor is the same color, a slice of it cooling in the spoon

the walls are full, josh hartnett, george clooney, the guy from the o.c., oh alright i know his name, adam brody

mulder and clark gable in white shirts

a painting my mom made of me as a girl looking out the window with red light at my back

my face is blue, the curtain is white and slippery in my small hand

these days i feel like a child waiting for my life to begin

there are things you can't do as a child, you have to wait

i knew it wouldn't come easy but i thought it would come easier, time after school laying itself out like a quilt

for awhile i sat in the sun and worked on my tan, i felt stronger

"gathering my strength like a consumptive in the sun," like diane cluck says

preparing for something unknown that would require a whole warm body and the appearance of athleticism or at least 

health, emotional flexibility

endurance

now i'm a little brown and my breasts are two white triangles, which i like

but the sun is further away and i have to wear socks at night

once again i search out the heat like a snake

in parking lots, corners of rooms, small squares of sunlight, flickering

i'm jealous of people i know who are getting shows, good jobs, i'm happy for them but i feel so far from a world in which that is possible

this bed with the red sheets, red walls, yellow lips of a man from a cut-up catalog, dark green fleece and the copper folds of his face like the gleaming back of a horse

i make paintings almost every day and when i look at them later and see the gray against the pink in the drape of a blanket i feel a surge which is love for a thing that is mine and not mine

but how do you fill a life, especially one so sick with ambition

rising in my throat when i lay down

unemployment, a long half-sleep

although last time i went to the art institute i didn't feel the itch of what i haven't done

i let all those people each have their moment in my day

not like they really need more moments but it isn't a tally system is it

some of them did what they had to do and it's beautiful

here are two gold-colored bookends shaped like shells, i will bring them to my new apartment when i have one

pay my rent with newspaper clippings from my grandmother in colorado and the pieces of my bottom lip that i have bitten off

bringing tears to my eyes

i read that as a girl margaret atwood wanted to write the great canadian novel and then she did

sometimes i go a whole day without touching anyone, even the dog, because i am using my hands to fan my fire

isn't that what those great painter men did all their lives? was it lonely for them?

i think it feels like selfishness because it is selfishness

for me and them both

though what is selfishness and what is just keeping warm

i can have grace sometimes when i need to and i must call upon it now like so many of us

ruined pride keeps us bobbing at the surface

debt a black rock

what are my abilities and are they in me like diamonds or do i call upon them and have them come to me from some 

other place, the field or the street beside it?

a grocery store on the corner has a picture in the window of marilyn monroe, does that mean i am home

today i did not make a painting

does that i mean i will die tomorrow

i want us all to have success, the best kind and on our own terms

i want to love all the people who are better at everything than i am

if they are good enough to let me

Sincerity in Art

Bruna Massadas, Studio Model (A Charcoal Drawing a Day Project), 2012.  Charcoal on paper, 14 X 17 inches.

What is my process of making work? Why do I choose this process? And, most importantly, why do I make work? In graduate school, I had the opportunity to experience different approaches to art and see how other artists relate to their work. This exposure stimulated questions about my process.

At first, while in graduate school, I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do: make art with my head. I made artworks as assignments, which others would check on to determine how well I was communicating a specific idea. This mode of art making relied heavily on explanations and research. The truth is I was neither good at those things nor liked making art this way. At the end of my first year of graduate school, I reacted against that. It was now all about the gut. The gut, however, implies a violence that I am not interested in. YES! POWER! CONTROL! AWARENESS! And what now? Do I want art making to be a reaction to something? It was still about the head since it was a reaction to it.

The problem to me was neither the head nor the gut. The problem was I was making art with the same unfulfilling purpose—to build a reputation (as an academic who makes art or a badass who makes art against something). I was more concerned about how others saw me than how I was experiencing the work. 

Lately I have been making a charcoal drawing a day and painting occasionally. No one comes into my studio but flies. My drawings are of things that happen everyday. There is absolutely nothing else to them than what you see. There is so much beauty in that. 

Painter as Warrior

As a follow-up to my previous post, "Painter as Jedi", I wanted to present a scene from one of my favorite movies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by director Ang Lee.

In the scene, Shu Lien, a veteran warrior and master of the martial arts, suspects a young aristocrat, Jen, of being the thief who recently stole the Green Destiny, a sword of great power.  In order to work out the tricky situation, Shu Lien visits Jen to befriend her and eventually uncover her devious actions.  When she arrives at Jen's private quarters, Jen is practicing her calligraphy; she offers to write Shu Lien's name, "just for fun" (the translated subtitles differ slightly from the dubbed dialogue; I prefer the subtitled translation).

Jen's proficiency with the sweeping motion of brush on paper all but reveals her secret identity as the martial arts thief and swordsman that Shu Lien had fought with earlier.  When Shu Lien remarks that calligraphy and swordfighting require similar movements and control, Jen of course plays dumb.

To me, the movie is all about discipline and self-control (represented by Li Mu Bai and Shu Lien) coming into conflict with unbridled power (Jen).  SPOILER: In the end, Shu Lien regrets dedicating her life to duty and honor as she was never able to fulfill her love for Li Mu Bai.  And Jen finally realizes that wielding power willy-nilly can have dire consequences when her careless actions inadvertently lead to Li Mu Bai's death.

Painting, fighting, calligraphy, fencing, storytelling: all require balance.  Power and innate talent is not enough; you must also have the knowledge of when and how to use it. 

Studio Visit

Pablo Picasso in his Cannes studio, 1956. Photograph: Arnold Newman/Getty Images.

You have a studio visit. You don’t know the person too well and he doesn’t know you. He comes in, looks at the paintings without saying much and after about 35 seconds sits down and looks at you. What do you say? Maybe he will refer you to someone important. Maybe he will get you a show. You talk. And you usually talk more than you should. You use these words and expressions you don’t know the meaning of too well, but you’ve got to impress:

“I am interested in questioning, … investigating, …exploring,  …lexicons, … that deals with, …Postmodernism (always said in a positive context), …identity, …perception, …abstraction, …conceptualization, …in-between, …formal, …tension between, …reminiscent, …process, …appropriation, …assemblage, …symbol for, …complexity, … dichotomy, …archiving, … the idea of nothing and the unknown, …Modernism (always in a bad connotation), deconstruction, …in relation to the body, …gravitate towards, …reconstruct, …contemporary issues, …dislocation, …modes of representation, …Feminism (I shouldn’t have said this word), …ambiguity, …juxtapositions, …criticality, …problematic, …contradictory, …Is AbEx back?...”

He says your work is challenging, shakes your hand, gets his coat and walks away. You see his back leaving the building and you don’t realize you still have a simper on your face.